All he wanted to do was die. How could even a Companion survive something like this without being crippled for life? If he hadn’t been so... so stupid, so despondent, Dallen would never have suggested the reckless run. If he hadn’t been so careless as to let down his shields, even though he didn’t remember doing so, this wouldn’t have happened. If only he had insisted on not doing this at all, or insisted on stopping as soon as the last sun vanished, it wouldn’t have happened. It was all his fault.
A heavy, horrible silence hung over everything here, a silence that was not even broken by his sobbing. He had learned the hard way how to cry silently a long time ago. So when Lena came running into the stall, his presence took them both by surprise.
He sat up at the sound of frantically running footsteps, and turned toward the stall door, and Lena’s shocked face stopped the breath in his body and the sobs in his throat.
“Da—” she began, then registered his presence. Her face changed from anguished distress to—well, he couldn’t read it.
“Mags, what is wrong with you? How could you have been so horrible? You aren’t stupid, you knew better than to run that course in the dark! Why did you do this to Dallen?” burst out of her, her voice shrill with accusation. “Why did you hurt him?”
Well it looked as if he was not the only person to blame himself.
“I didn’ do it!” he snapped, without thinking, lashing back defensively. He went in an instant from anguished to angry. It sounded as if she thought he had taken a crowbar to Dallen’s legs! “It were a horrible accident! We was runnin’ obstacles! An—something—”
“Why were you running obstacles in the dark?” she retorted, interrupting him before he could tell her about the murderous mind he had brushed up against, her cheeks red with fury. “How stupid is that? What were you thinking, why did you make Dallen do that?”
“I didn’ make him do anything!” Mags shouted back, then glanced guiltily at the poor hanging Companion. If he hadn’t been so low, would Dallen ever have suggested such a thing? “ ’E was the one that said we should do it!”
“Did he want to, or were you so drowning in feeling sorry for yourself that he would do anything, no matter how stupid it was, to get you out of it?” she shouted back. “Bear was right! You don’t care about anything but yourself! You won’t even take responsibility for this! You’re horrible! You’re a horrible, horrible person and you probably are going to try and kill the King, because anyone that would do this to Dallen would do anything!”
He almost jumped up out of the straw and hit her. He did jump to his feet, and he had to fight with himself not to hit her, or grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled, or shove her to the ground. His hands clenched and unclenched, his chest heaved and hurt, and his head spun in circles.
And the awful thought went through his mind then that if Dallen died... if Dallen died, he wouldn’t care about anything. He would go crazy. If he could have to fight not to hurt Lena right now, there would be nothing holding him back if that happened. He’d just want everything else to hurt as much as he did. And no matter who it was that was in front of him at that moment—if they came at him the way Lena was now, there was no telling what he would do to them.
Maybe that was it. Maybe that was what the Foreseers had seen. The moment when he snapped and did the unthinkable.
Meanwhile words, awful, hurtful words poured out of his mouth, and he could do nothing to stop them. “Get out, ye worthless bint!” he screamed back at her. “Ye get in ’ere on the strength of yer pa’s reputation, an’ ye cain’t even sing a simple song in front of people wi’out sommun holdin’ yer hand an’ tellin’ ye wot ter do, an’ ye dare tell me all thet stuff? Ye close yersel’ in yer room an’ sulk fer days ev’time summat goes wrong, ye make half yer Collegium try and cosset ye back t’ actin’ like somethin’ other than a wee babby, an’ ye tell me I am th’ one thet on’y keers fer hisself? Ye tell me I am th’ selfish one? Aye, the world circles ’round poor wee Lena, an’ ain’t nothin’ else matters, not even though m’best friend broke both ’is legs savin’ me! ’Tis all ’bout you! Get out! Leave me alone!”
Her mouth hanging open, she stared at him, as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard. Then, with a sob that wrenched its way out of her chest, she whirled and ran for the door.
With an identical sob that felt as painful as it sounded, he dropped back down to the straw, sure that his cup of misery had overflowed.
He’d said unforgivable things to her. She would—no one would—ever forgive him, ever trust him again. The moment Amily found out what he had said, she would hate him forever. Everyone would hate him.
And rightly. He was destroying everything around him, as surely as if he was running about the Collegium with a knife, slashing everything he cared about to ribbons.
Maybe that awful thing that had brushed up against his mind wasn’t from outside; maybe it had been from inside him!
Maybe that wild rumor was true—and there was something hateful, malicious inside him! Maybe it—this thing that was the real Mags—had broken out for just a second, and he had seen and felt what he really was inside!
Blindly he ran for the door, and just as blindly tore down the path to his room. He stumbled and fell several times, picked himself up without a thought and kept running. He raced past the accusing eyes of the other Companions and into his room and slammed the door behind himself, locking it.
Then he dropped to the floor, arms wrapped around his chest, sobbing silently again. His eyes swelled and burned, his chest ached, his throat was so choked he could scarcely breathe. All he could think about was what he had said to Lena—what she had said to him. What he had done to Dallen.
No matter that he had destroyed his own life. He’d also destroyed Lena’s and Dallen’s.
He jumped as an angry pounding on his door startled him.
“Mags! Mags! Answer me! Answer me, you right bastard!”
It was Bear.
“Come out of there, you coward! Get out here so I can pound you! I’m going to whip you like the mad dog you are!”
Of course it was Bear.
“Who else, what else are you going to ruin, eh?” he shouted furiously, pounding with what sounded like both fists on the door. “Who’s next? Who else are you going to betray? You’ve already destroyed Dallen! Dallen’s probably never going to walk again without pain, much less ride a circuit! What kind of Companion can’t ride a circuit? And you sent Lena into a state where all she can do is cry! You couldn’t even bother to lift a finger to save me from what my family is going to do to me, you selfish bastard! Who else are you going to destroy? Gennie? Amily? The King?”
There it was. Bear believed it too. And if Bear believed it—it had to be true.
“You don’t belong here!” Bear screamed. “You don’t deserve a Companion! You don’t deserve to be a Trainee! Why don’t you go crawl back into your hole in the ground where you came from?”
Why indeed?
Bear was right. He didn’t belong here. He was a blight. An infection. An animal, a mad, dangerous animal. He shouldn’t be around decent folks.
The Foreseers were right.
Bear pounded and pounded on the door, yelling, but Mags wasn’t listening anymore. He was kneeling on the floor, his arms wrapped around his chest, sobbing and rocking, sobbing and rocking, until Bear finally gave up and went away.
Mags’ mind ran around and around in circles, like a mouse trapped in the bottom of a water jar. The candle in his lantern burned down, then out, and he remained where he was on the floor, still curled up around his pain.
There was nothing he could do. There was no way to make any of this right again. All he would continue to do would be to make things worse.
No wonder Nikolas had “disappeared.” He must have been the first to realize just what a bad lot Mags was. Maybe his parents hadn’t been bandits after all, but everything else that Master Cole had said about him was right. H
e was bad blood, not worth anything.
The best thing he could do right now would be to die—
But no, Dallen was still bonded to him. If he died, in the condition that Dallen was in now, Dallen would probably die along with him.
But Dallen could re-Choose. He knew that was possible. It didn’t happen often, and usually only when a Herald died, but it could happen. Tylendel’s Companion had repudiated him, and presumably had been intending to re-Choose.
Dallen could surely do the same.
And he, Mags, could force the issue.
Yes, that would be the very best thing that he could do. In fact, it was the only honorable thing left for him to do.
And that was where his mind finally stopped, frozen. With the conviction that this was the only possible answer to what he had done. And so he remained, sleepless, curled on the cold floor, in the dark, until at last the first light of dawn filtered in through the window.
Chapter14
MAGS knew that if he hesitated, if he said or did anything, if he even gave a hint of what he was about to do, someone would try and stop him. Stupid, but there was always someone who thought that the unsalvageable could be saved. Right now he didn’t want the temptation to change his mind or the effort it would take to fight the well-meaning. So he shielded himself completely. Dallen was in no condition to pick his thoughts up, but others might.
Not that the Companions were likely to do anything about him. They would probably be only too happy to see the last of him.
He wasn’t going to leave more of a mess than he had already created, however. He would make it easy for the rest to erase him, his presence, his life from this place. So he set to work, putting all of his books and class supplies on the table, packing his personal possessions in a basket, then carefully folding all of the clothing he had been given and laying it on the bed until the only things left were the clothes he had arrived in. He didn’t feel bad about taking those; after all, they had been cast-offs in the first place.
He dressed in the ill-fitting, un-matching shirt and trews, pulled on the much-patched boots, and peeked around the door to ensure that the Companions were still drowsing. His preparations hadn’t taken long at all, the stable was dark, lit only by the two night-lanterns at either end. Making no noise, he slipped out of the stable before anyone, even the grooms that served this stable, was awake. He crept across the grounds as he had learned to creep and hide back at the mine when he was sneaking about looking for food. The sun wasn’t even up yet. He scuttled from bit of cover to bit of cover, and not even the dawn-rising gardeners saw him leave.
The Guards had a bad habit; they watched and challenged people trying to get into the Palace or the Collegia, but not the ones leaving. So once he reached the gates where the lowest of the servants came and went, he stopped skulking; he went through the gates and just walked off the property in the wake of a delivery cart, and they didn’t give him a second glance.
But now, dressed as shabbily as he was, he quickly had to move to the “back” of all those fancy manors and near-palaces that were up here. He needed to get off the main road where he would be conspicuous, and into the alleys and lanes behind them, where people like he was “belonged.”
The first thing was, he needed a job. If he was going to stay alive, at least until Dallen decided to repudiate him and find someone else, he needed to keep himself fed and sheltered. And... that wasn’t as hard at he had made it out to be when he and Bear and Lena talked about running off. If you didn’t care how well you lived, only that you stayed alive, there were plenty of things he could do. None of it was interesting or rewarding, but why would that matter now? All he cared about, really, was that it be hard enough work to keep him from thinking and let him fall into the same exhausted stupor he had when work at the mine was finished.
And certainly, there was plenty of potential for being abused and mistreated, but that didn’t matter in the least to him. Right now, he didn’t really care how well or badly treated he was. It came to him after a moment that he’d actually welcome being punished, since he certainly deserved it.
The way to find a job like that was to ask for it. While there were places down in Haven where those looking for work could be hired, more often than not, the sort of thing he was looking for came to a person that presented himself at the right time, and in the right manner. He was clean and neat, which argued for being reliable, and he was dressed perfectly for the sort of person that would be in the lowest ranks of the unskilled servants; exactly the right sort of “shabby.” No one would trust him with horses, for instance, not even in mucking out the stalls, but they’d be happy to offload all the dirtiest, nastiest kitchen jobs on someone like him. Scullery jobs, that was the thing, jobs that went, even at the Pieters’ mine, to people who were paid in little more than food and a place to sleep on the floor.
One by one he went down the line of manor houses. At each, he presented himself at the kitchen door, looking for work. In late afternoon, he found a place, as one of the pot-scrubbers. There was no one lower. Potscrubbers—who also scrubbed the kitchen floor when the day’s work was done, and hauled out the garbage—frequently deserted their posts, so someone was always looking for replacements. He didn’t have to look as if he was eager; stupidity was an asset in such a job. No one cared if his eyes were swollen and red with weeping; all they cared about was a sturdy body and just barely enough intelligence to do the work.
He tapped on the door—he didn’t even know whose house this was, only that it was moderately sized, and wasn’t Master Soren’s. A frazzled kitchen-maid answered it. Her apron was splashed and stained with whatever she had just been working on, and there was flour in her hair.
“Got work?” he asked, dully.
“Mebbe. Stay here,” she replied, and scuttled off. She came back with a broad man in a white shirt and enveloping apron.
The red-faced, balding cook eyed him, frowning. “One of our boys ran off. You gonna run off?”
“Nossir,” he mumbled, not looking at the cook, since that would be insolence.
“I ’spect hard work outa you. You don’t work, you get beat. You understand?”
“Yessir.” He looked at his feet.
“You get eats, and a bed at the fire. Twice a year, get a suit of clothes and three pennies. Understood?”
“Yessir.” He bobbed his head. “Thenkee sir.”
The cook shoved him inside the door, then to a place at a sink already full of hot water, soap, and pots. “Get to work.”
Evidently the staff here was considered large enough to keep two potboys busy; the other one was younger than Mags, but they were about the same size. And the size of the stack they were to clean was daunting. So, the household—or the cook—was frugal when it came to staffing. There was too much work for just two small boys, unless one of them was Mags, who threw himself into the job in a way that made the cook grunt with surprise and satisfaction.
This, at least, was one thing he could do right. With pumice stone and harsh soap, he attacked each pot as if it was his life. Unlike his life, he could clean this mess up. The cook was not stingy about hot water and soap, ordering them to change it whenever it got merely warm and not when it was as foul and cold as a sewer.
He did two pots for every one of the other boy’s, which made the other boy glower at him when the cook shouted abuse at him for not keeping up. Mags didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he was going to try and make friends ever again. So he kept his head down and his shoulders hunched over, and eventually the boy stopped bothering even to glare at him.
The other boy reminded him of the mine-kiddies, with his sullen looks and grunts instead of speaking—shoulders hunched much like Mags, and hair falling down over his face and into his eyes. But he didn’t look ill-fed, and there weren’t a lot of bruises on him. Maybe the cook beat him for assumed shirking, but it didn’t look as if people in this kitchen were beaten for no reason other than that the cook wanted to beat someone.
There weren’t any, and the other boy scuttled across the kitchen, a rapid sort of slinking walk that, again, was much as the mine-kiddies used to do. He sidled over to a table in an alcove, where the remains of the kitchen staff luncheon was. After a moment, Mags trudged over there too.
It appeared that the kitchen staff was fed on what the masters of the house left over, and right now, after everyone else had picked the remains over, what was left for him and the other boy looked like the aftermath of a plague of insects. Mostly what remained were odds and ends of bread, the crusts from pies, and some bits of vegetable. Some pickles. A little fruit. In terms of bulk, they wouldn’t go hungry. The other boy pounced on anything that looked like it had gravy or sauce on it, hunted for scraps of cheese or shreds of meat. He gathered his finds greedily to him, glaring at Mags.
Mags didn’t even bother picking things over, he just shoved whatever was nearest into his mouth, not even tasting it, just mechanically chewing and swallowing until his stomach told him he was full. Dully, he noted the other kitchen staff looked all right—not starved, and they didn’t cringe much. It looked as if he’d fallen into a situation where he was going to survive all right.
They weren’t given a moment of rest though, and no time for the sort of banter and gossip he’d seen in the Collegium kitchen—and others. They were working every moment, the head cook looming over them and lashing them with words, if not his fists. As Mags watched, he figured out what the pecking order was, and who was best to steer clear of. Then the cook, who had kept a fraction of his attention on them the whole time shouted at both of them. “Get your lazy bums over here, you two! Pots are piling up!” So it was back to the sink.
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